In 1988, Soichiro Fukutake, then president and representative director of Fukutake Publishing (now Benesse Corporation), approached architect Tadao Ando and told him that he wanted to create a "utopia" in Japan.

Whenever traveling directly from one island in the Seto Inland Sea to another, I sense threads holding each one to the other. Perhaps this is a vestige of the trade routes that traversed the 700-plus islands in this scenic region between Hiroshima and Osaka. ...